February 2011

Welcome to the February 2011 Update Notes Page. What are Update Notes you ask? Every time we update Wizard101, we like to let our players know what changes have been made and what new additions have been given to the game. Update Notes explain those changes and updates.

This month's update includes new Celestia Castles & Lands, improvements to Gardening, Membership Benefits and much much more!

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Celestia Housing

New Celestia Housing

We know you've been wondering when these Castles & Lands would arrive and the industrious residents of Celestia have opened up shop. Here's a peek at the two new houses.

The Island Getaway

The Celestial Observatory

This item can be purchased for Crowns or Gold in the Crown Shop.

This item will challenge our players, as it will need to be crafted.See the housing turtle in Celestia for the recipe.

Gardening Updates

How does your Garden Grow?

Since we've released Gardening to the Spiral, you've given us some feedback that let us see how players are Gardening, what's missing, what's confusing and what needs to be made more fun. Here are some updates to Gardening that will address some of these issues.

There is a new tab in your Gardening window for pots and items.

The base of plants will now glow when they are ready to be harvested.

New Dorm rooms will start with two pots of soil.

To avoid confusion, the wording "Time to harvest" has been changed to "Time until Harvest" to better reflect the time is indicating how long before you can harvest that plant.

Gardening Treasure Cards can now be trashed by right-clicking them in your deck.

Also to avoid confusion, the icon indicating your plant needs magic now has a white pip to represent magic, and no longer a yellow pip which was easily confused with the 'needs sun' icon.

All plants now like pixies.

Stinkweed will now grow faster!

Once a plant is in a pot, you cannot pick them up!

You can now harvest plants while you are in the Gardening window.

Gnomes will no longer trip you up as you run around your Garden.

Treasure Cards that affect all plants now clarify that they only affect plants in the current zone of your house (indoors/outdoors)

Pots and plants now count towards your housing item count. There is no longer a 'gardening' item count. Each pot, plot and plant individually counts as an item in your house.

The Gardening Experience bar will now reflect your experience to the next rank, not the entire 1-10 rank. In other words, the Gardening Experience bar will now function like the standard experience bar for Wizard levels, showing how much experience you need for the next level.

Enchanted soil spells now cost the correct amount of energy shown on the spell.

For those of you who navigate the Spiral using your mouse to move, you will no longer cast a gardening spell when you release the mouse button used to walk.

The Imperial Palace contained an area that you could plant on, but not reach to harvest. You can now click on plants in those areas to harvest them.

World Updates

Spiral Updates

Life is change. Here are some minor changes in the worlds and creatures of the Spiral.
Wizard City

So as not to confuse our new players, Pet Snacks and Reagents have been removed from the creatures in Unicorn Way.

Boris Tallstaff has taken up a new location in the library.

Players will be given the quest "Grim Tales" at a higher level.

More chests have been added to Unicorn Way

Players will be able to get the quest "Pesky Pirates" after they have completed "Stop the Maker".

Grizzleheim

Orn in Grizzleheim has a new quest!

Krokotopia

The clue to direct you to Oka's chest is a little clearer to decipher.

Mooshu

Ahn Fu has decided to take a new ancestral name and is now known as Ahn Nao.

The Emperor is no longer missing from his bed when the player is on the quest "An Imperial Cure".

Dragonspyre

Dungeon time indicators have been adjusted to more accurately represent the approximate time it will take a player to complete the area.

Celestia

Selwyn Skywatcher and Unimatus have learned the error of their ways and will no longer cheat.

Celestia creatures that were appearing to resurrect after defeat should now stay defeated.

Speak up! Celestia characters that had no voice will once again speak their mind! You will download individual files for those that were missing their voice chat.

Membership Benefits

Benefits of Membership

Current active subscribers who have paid with a credit card are now part of our Wizard101 Membership Program! As part of our Wizard101 Membership Program, players who have made a subscription purchase with a valid credit card in the last 30 days, or have an active recurring subscription will have these added features:

Your backpack will grow to 120 slots.

Your Crafting & Hatching Timers will now reset twice as fast.

Your friends list will expand to 120 people.

Your Energy will regenerate faster.

This does not apply to players who use their credit card to purchase Crowns.
This does not apply to players who use Gift Certificates or Gift Cards to make their purchases in Wizard101.
You will have these benefits as long as you have an active renewing membership. These benefits expire when your membership expires.
Please note, when your membership expires (you are no longer an active subscriber) your backpack will return to 80 slots and you will not be able to put more items in your backpack until you empty out the overflow. Your friends list will also return to 100 maximum, and you will not be able to add new friends until you remove the overflow.

Shopping Updates

Shopping Updates

Some Gold prices have changed.

The 'Sale' Tab has been renamed to the Featured Tab and will now Feature items that are both on sale, and not on sale.

Henchmen will now sort by level not school. You can easily reorder the Henchmen in List View.

The following items have been removed from the Crown Shop, and from Zeke where applicable:

White Mare Mount (permanent, 7 day and 1 day rentals)

Purple Glider Mount (permanent, 7 day and 1 day rentals)

Faithful Dragoness (permanent and 7 day rental)

Celestian Sword

There's always the chance these items will return in the future, but for now, they are no longer available in the Crown Shop or at Zeke.

Ice Hounds will now appear to cast their own spells (if they've manifested one!), and won't make the player cast for them!

The Polar Cat now gives 1 Dragonblade Card as intended.

Jade Oni and Earthwalker pets now have the chance of manifesting spells that match their school.

Mounts

The Charity Meowmodon has had its speed increased to 40% to match the other permanent mounts.

You should no longer hear your mount when playing minigames.

Housing

The Housing menu now indicates how many free Housing slots you have.

Owners of the Castles & Lands that contain a PvP circle can now boot any players engaged in a duel in their house.

Players can no longer sell a house that still contains pets.

Grizzleheim wallpaper & tile are available at the Grizzleheim furniture store!

Spells

A new Treasure Card Pack has arrived in the Crowns Shop: The Hand of Doom Pack! Have a chance to summon a world boss to fight at your side!

Efreet's Weakness effect can now be removed by Cleanse Charm

Level 60 Ice Henchman has an improved deck and will taunt less frequently.

Lightning Elf now does damage for all three rounds as expected.

Chat

KingsIsle’s commitment to maintaining a family friendly game and the increasing amount of players using the caps to talk around chat filters, it was deemed to be an appropriate action to remove the capitalization ability in the filtered chat. As long as you’re chatting appropriately and within the filters, there should be no issue with communications.

Energy

So as not to confuse our new Wizards, the Energy globe will not appear until a player has a pet or completes the Gardening introduction quest.

Items

The following items were incorrectly blocking spells from all schools instead of spells from just one spell. The display indicated it blocked from the one school, but the character panel showed blocking from all schools. Since what the card showed was correct, we adjusted the character panel to properly reflect the blocked spells.
Robes